


Nu Eridanids

by dustoftheancients



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Curses, Dark, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Love/Hate, Reylo - Freeform, Slow Burn, ancient sith and other horrors, hurt and hurt some more, wander in dark places and you find dark things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2018-12-04 01:02:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11544183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustoftheancients/pseuds/dustoftheancients
Summary: They are cursed, together. They may die together, too, if they don't watch it.The hand in the dark gets bitten.





	1. Chapter 1

A blast shook the hull. Rey stumbled, scrambling to find something to steady herself. She grabbed ahold of the catwalk railing and tried to keep herself on her feet as the ship rocked around her.

The smell of burning metal stung her nose and eyes. She needed to find the problem with the engines _fast_.

As soon as the ship settled, she swung herself under the railing and dropped a half-deck to the engines below. Heat blew in her face and a charge in the air raised the hair on her arms; the engines were working at their fullest capacity, trying to out-speed and out-maneuver a whole squad of fighters.

Damned First Order. She wished they would all _burn_ -

But, no. She wasn’t supposed to think like that. She was supposed to choose to be _better_.

She tried to remember Luke’s teachings.

Her darker thoughts didn’t last very long, anyway, because the engines immediately demanded her full attention. She needed to find out what was wrong with the drive core.

“ _Any time, now, Rey_ ,” the communicator on her wrist crackled. She could barely hear Poe’s voice over the thrumming of the engines and the violent _boom_ when another shot hit the hull. Scrambling for balance, Rey felt her skin rip open as she dragged it across a sharp piece of metal. She yanked her hand to her chest with a sharp hiss.

There was a nasty tear on the side of her palm. Blood already trailed down past her wrist. She winced at the sight, but there was nothing she could do about it in the moment.

It took her several seconds to remember to respond to Poe. Mashing the button on her comm, she snapped, “Doing the best I can, here. I’ve never been on a ship like this before.”

There was static as another blast from a fighter rocked the ship. “- _matter if we’re both_ -”

Three blasts hit the ship in succession. Blasts that felt more than twice as strong as the ones previous, and actually caused Rey to fall to her knees.

Bombs, she thought vaguely.

“ _TIE bombers_ -”

Another bomb exploded against the ship, cutting off the sound on her comm. It shook the ship so much that she couldn’t find her footing.

All she could do was hang on.

There was another blast-

It hit close to the engine room, close enough that the left engine erupted in fire. It started spouting flames, and Rey had to scramble backwards so as not to be burned alive.

She felt the gravity shift around her. Suddenly, the heat in the room became molten-hot, the smell of leaking chemicals mixing in with the burning metal. If any of those chemicals mixed, it would not be good.

Rey had _moments_.

She managed to push herself to her feet as the floor rolled around underneath her, but just barely. She made it up the catwalk and out of the engine room before the first explosion.

The first one knocked her off her feet.

The second sent her flying.

Rey slammed against the far the bulkhead with enough force that she immediately blacked out. When she came-to – moments or minutes later – the engine room was nothing more than a pit of raging fire. The fire-suppression system had come on, but it was doing little good. The damage was far too severe.

She blinked heavily. It took her a moment to remember what had happened, why she was on the floor of a burning ship. But another blast jogged her memory.

The entire ship shook continuously. For a wild moment, Rey was afraid that it was going to be torn in two, and that she would be blasted out into space. Fire and life blinked out in an instant.

She forced herself to breathe, to ignore the spiraling fear that tugged forcefully at her thoughts.

The engine room was on fire. She had to leave.

They had to abandon ship.

Pain blossomed throughout her body like bursting veins, but she didn’t have time to check herself for injuries. Wincing, she pulled herself to her feet and tried to contact the cockpit. “Poe?” She groaned, “Poe?”

There was no answer.

She had to move quickly before the flames overtook the entire lower deck. She made her way to the ladder leading back to the main deck as quickly as she could, holding on the walls for support as the ship shuddered. Shaking, but with enough adrenaline coursing through her veins to give her muscles some semblance of strength, she climbed up the ladder.

The main deck was in better shaped than the lower deck, but not by much. But it wasn’t on fire, at least. Not yet.

“Poe!” She called towards the cockpit. Her entire body ached and her hand was numb. It was difficult to focus, and her head felt – not right. She felt like she was going to vomit.

Rey ignored it as best she could and made her way towards the front of the ship. But as soon as she did, she regretted it. They were breaking through a planet’s atmosphere. All the lights in the cockpit flashed warning red, but they were drowned by the light of the flames running across the viewport. The ship shook around them, groaning under the stress.

 _Crashing_ -

Poe sat in the pilot’s seat, fighting with the controls. His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, and his entire body seemed to shake with the effort he used to fight their descent. He barely acknowledged her when she clutched at his shoulder, consumed as he was.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” she shouted over the flames and alarms and the adrenaline rushing through her head. She couldn’t hear herself _think_ , her stomach was churning, and all she knew was that they needed to _leave_ -

“I can save her,” is all he said.

The ship broke through the atmosphere. It was suddenly very dark outside the viewport – the dark side of the planet, too dark to see where they were. The only light was from their own flames and the blazing green bolts from the TIE fighters that still buzzed around them. They weren’t bombing them anymore, but that was likely because they didn’t need to. This ship was done for.

So were they, if they waited much longer.

Rey shook his arm. Everything was starting to get dizzy again. “Poe, the ship is lost. We’ve got to-”

“Go,” he shook her off, “you get to an escape pod. I’ll be right behind you.”

“That’s not going to happen,” she grabbed his jacket and started to yank him away from the controls. He budged, but not far enough.

He struggled, trying to push her away and pilot the ship simultaneously – not that the latter did much good. They were going to crash.

“The Resistance _needs_ the intel you’re carrying,” she reminded him. “Without you-”

“Alright.” Poe – _finally_ – let go of the controls, letting her pull him away. Rey dragged him with her to the escape pods, one of which had been half-blow into a twisted pile of molten durasteel. There were three more pods, thankfully. They would only need two.

Poe jammed the sequence in the control panel beside them to unlock the pods. He paused only a second.

“Get away from your pod as soon as you can. These bastards will be on us like a nest of mynocks.”

Rey nodded, her heart thundering in her chest. “Be careful.”

“You, too.”

Closing the hatch behind her, Rey had barely settled in the pod before she felt it unlatch from the ship. Poe’s pod ejected beside her, a thin trail of light. Pressing the few keys to release it, she jettisoned her own pod.

A few moments later, the sky lit up behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here I am, back again! It's been a while, and this isn't the story I thought I'd be writing next, but I'm just going to go with the flow. This chapter isn't long, but it's more of a prologue than anything. I'm really excited to be writing this story, and I hope you guys stick around for more. Thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

Rage – at himself, _always_ at himself, but also at Skywalker, the _scavenger_ – carried Kylo through the corridors of the _Finalizer_ , boiling in his veins and drawing him to the bridge with a vengeance. Surely, it hadn’t been _her_. Surely, he would have sensed her _before_ -

If it was true, then it was yet another sign of his weakness. His wretched _failure_.

The door to the bridge opened with barely a sound, but his footfalls automatically drew the gazes of the officers. Perhaps a few of them could vaguely sense the cloak of dark anger that shrouded him. Yet, some other officers studiously acted as if he wasn’t there, which was worse.

Kylo ground his teeth together.

“Did you find them?” He snapped.

The captain approached him with the same mix of fear and contempt that First Order officers always did, the contempt that he had learned all military brass felt whenever an outside party stepped on their toes. Kylo was intimately familiar with receiving that sort of half-hidden sneer.

On some days it irritated him. On a day like this, he had bigger things to worry about.

But even then, he couldn’t help but wonder – how many of the men knew of his injuries? How many in the First Order had seen or heard of him in his most _pathetic_ state, burned and bleeding out-

All at the hands of that _girl_.

“We’ve sent a squadron of fighters to intercept the Resistance vessel.” The captain clasped his hands behind his back, his posture nearly as rigid as Hux’s. Kylo sneered behind his mask. The skin of his cheek was still raw and it hurt to stretch, but he welcomed the discomfort. “They won’t make it far with those schematics, I assure-”

Kylo brushed past the captain. “The Resistance agents. Was one of them a girl?”

“A…girl?”

He paused, his fist clenching at his side. Impatience crawled up his spine.

“Yes, captain, _female_.” Kylo slowly turned to look back at him. “Who. Were. The agents?”

The captain shook his head. “I don’t-”

But Kylo was already moving away from him, drawing closer to the bridge’s viewport. He studied the planet below, as if he was hoping to catch a glimpse-

“The fighters have engaged, sir,” one of the ensigns called. The captain commanded that they transfer the audio to include his headset.

“No,” Kylo interrupted, “the whole bridge.”

The captain glanced at him, but the ensign did as told.

They lost a fighter almost as soon as they engaged, and then another shortly after. The Resistance agents were putting up a good fight for being in a stolen cargo freighter. However, even with a skilled crew it was no use. The TIE fighters greatly outnumbered the one vessel, and it wasn’t long before the pilots reported multiple direct hits to the freighter’s hull. The captain gave the order to use the bombers.

Kylo screwed his eyes shut and stretched out his senses, trying to discern whether or not he had been right. Whether or not what he had felt was true – if it had been the scavenger. He _had_ sensed her, he was sure of it. It had been _her_. If she was on that ship-

He would find her.

“The ship is gonna blow,” the fighter pilot reported moments before they saw it themselves. The blast was large enough to see on the bridge, just a brief little pinprick of light amid dark clouds. Gone in a moment. Kylo pressed his lips together, stretching out his senses to their limit, trying to find the scavenger.

She would _not_ die in some fireball in the sky.

No, he wouldn’t let her.

She would die by _his_ hand. He would do to her what she had done to him, only _ten fold_. A skinny desert rat should never have caught his attention in the first place, he should never have-

One of The fighter pilot’s voices crackled over the speakers. “Two escape pods jettisoned.”

_There_.

Kylo’s breath hitched. The scavenger was in one of the escape pods. The second one.

“Track them,” he commanded the captain, who looked as if he had just swallowed something sour.

The captain inhaled and spun on his men. He relayed the order in a crisp, irritated tone, then turned back to Kylo. “Will you be taking a shuttle, then, lord Ren?”

The muscle in Kylo’s shoulder was still stiff. That would only matter if he relied on his left arm too much, but at that moment his discomfort only added to his rage. The pain in his shins could mostly be ignored. He was thankful that the Supreme Leader had at least allowed him to use bacta on his abdomen until it had fully healed.

The scavenger would not get away this time. He would _rectify_ his previous error.

Kylo spared the captain only a glance before he turned.

“Yes. Send me the coordinates for the second pod.”

 

* * *

 

The escape pod landed with enough force that Rey blacked out again for a minute. It felt like like being stopped by a large durasteel wall, only _worse_. The impact jarred her body enough that it brought tears to her eyes and tore a wet gasp from her chest.

But she was alive.

She felt like her body was turning into one massive, molten _bruise_ , but she was alive.

That was the important thing.

Poe told her to run as soon as she hit the ground, and she would. She just – needed a minute.

Needed to catch her breath. Needed to stop _hurting_ so badly.

The pod had landed – half-crashed, really – right side up, which was a small mercy. But the small porthole revealed nothing about where she was; everything was too dark outside. She needed to figure out where she was in the galaxy.

Not that she could recognize many planets by sight, anyway.

Cracking open the escape pod proved to be more difficult than it should have been. The door had gotten slightly damaged in the landing, bent just enough that it didn’t want to open past a point. After several frustrating tries she gave up and pulled out her lightsaber. She burned an awkward hole just big enough to climb through without burning herself. The durasteel fell to the ground with a _thud_.

Rey climbed out of the escape pod as gingerly as possible. She had forgotten how badly her body ached, but now that she was back on the ground she was starting to remember.

All around her was rock, barren nothingness for as far as she could see in the darkness. The single, tiny moon was the color of wet sand, and did little to illuminate the world. A warm wind blew bits of sand in her face and obscured the farther landscape from sight. There were no sounds besides the wind.

The planet was nothing but a desolate rock, as far as she could tell.

Not very likely to find any civilization nearby, then.

She stumbled away from the pod as soon as her boots hit the ground. The outline of what appeared to be mountains were just barely visible through the sand and clouds, razor sharp edges that cut into the sky all around her. Overhead, only a few stars were bright enough to break through the atmosphere, which looked a little more red and orange that what she thought was normal.

This place was the worst kind of unfamiliar.

Rey turned and started making her way into the darkness. She needed to put some distance between herself and the crash. The pod glowed like a beacon the dark of night, and it wouldn’t take long for the First Order to get there.

She had to find Poe.

Wherever they were, they could find a way off-world _after_ they found each other. If there even was a way off-world.

She had landed in the middle of a valley. The more she walked, the more apparent it became that she was going to have to navigate the more treacherous grounds if she was going to have any hope of hiding herself. She was far too exposed in the middle of the vast nothingness around her.

Had Poe landed in the same valley? Or had he crashed into the side of a mountain? She didn’t even know if she was headed in the right direction; perhaps she was moving farther away from him.

But before she could even truly worry about that, she – she had to sit down.

Dizziness overcame her, and she finally lost the battle with her stomach. Falling to her knees, Rey vomited up the contents of her stomach. Tears filled her eyes and she gasped as her hand came in contact with the ground. She had forgotten about the cut on her hand.

Vomiting didn’t make her feel any better. If anything, it made her feel worse. She scooted away from her mess, leaned back on her elbows despite the pain, and shut her eyes.

She tried to focus on settling herself, on settling her gut.

Her hand felt like it was on fire. Her head felt like it was swimming in space. Her back and limbs _ached_ and were already bruising. She felt-

_Awful_.

Definitely wounded.

And then there was something else – a sharp stab in the back of her thoughts – and she suddenly felt infinitely  _worse_.

Rey’s eyes snapped open.

_Kylo Ren._

Damn it all to oblivion, of _course_ he had to be there. As if this whole thing hadn’t been bad enough. And he was _close_ – how had she not noticed before?

It took only moments to spot his shuttle. It was no more than a blip in the sky, just the glow from a pair of engines. Yet even from that distance, she knew that was him. Darkness and fury spiked through the air, reaching towards her in violent streaks. All from him. It felt like watching a storm approach. A dark, treacherous maelstrom.

Rey immediately pushed herself back to her feet, doing her best to ignore the wave of dizziness that overcame her once more, and tried to contact Poe on her communicator.

“Poe, are you there?”

She got no answer.

Jogging made her feel like she was going to vomit again, but she couldn’t let herself get caught. Not by _him_. She had to put as much distance between herself and the escape pod as possible.

Kylo Ren would know which pod had been hers. He would come straight to her. There was no doubt in her mind about that.

Her lightsaber weighed on her belt as she moved, her only comfort. But in an actual fight against Kylo Ren, who would no doubt be holding a grudge after their last encounter, in the condition she was in – her weapon was less of a comfort.

Once she was sure she had put some distance between herself and her escape pod, once she had started to make her way uphill where there was more cover and she felt less exposed, Rey gave in to the urge to glance over her shoulder. Kylo Ren’s shuttle was already close enough to be initiating landing. She watched as its wings moved up, compacting into itself as red lights blinked along the sides. Warning lights, she thought. Warning her to get away.

The wind started to kick up around her, a sickeningly warm breeze at her back. It stung her eyes, a little.

Rey wasn’t about to waste time watching Kylo Ren exit his shuttle. She forced herself to run, forced herself to ignore the pain that shot through her back and legs. She tried to contact Poe again, but still she received no response.

Something tickled the back of her neck, something that made her hair stand on-end the closer she got to the mountains. It wasn’t Kylo Ren, she didn’t think. But it felt – _dark_ like him. Darker, even.

_Rotten_.

The feeling seemed to be carried on the breeze. It chilled her to the bone, even though the night was warm.

Rey followed along the sides of the mountains, hoping that they would lead her to some sort of way out. _Away_. It had to, there was no other option. The mountains rose around her like teeth, and the sinking feeling that she was stuck in the jaws of a monster grew in the back of her mind like a slow terror. Maybe the monster was at her back. Or maybe the monster was the planet itself.

The rotten feeling permitted the air. And it only got stronger as she went.

She came across a stone obelisk turned over in the sand just to her right. She almost didn’t notice it, except for it’s strange, deliberate shape. Its twin still stood erect beside it. Another still stood across from it, half crumbled.

The obelisks rang out to her, somehow, like they added their own pitch to the wind. But they were just remnants.

The emptiness she felt while looking at the obelisks, the quiet desolation of everything she saw reminded her a little of Jakku, but it was all very different. This planet was hard, cracked. It felt as if she was walking on bones. Ancient bones.

The obelisks led into the side of the mountain, to a large, carved-out area of stone that appeared to be some sort of entrance. Even in the darkness, she could tell that the obelisks were all covered in ornate markings, that time and effort had been put into the strange structure itself. When she wandered closer to one of the stone pillars, the carvings almost seemed to mean something. She felt as if she could almost make it out, if only they were a slightly different shape, or if she had had the light of day. The knowledge felt on the tip of her brain – lost, yet so close to being _there_.

She spread her palm against the obelisk, as if feeling the carvings would illuminate some of their meaning. It felt warm to the touch. She forgot about the cut on her hand, and it snagged on one of the carvings, drawing more blood. She snatched her hand away.

“Damn it,” she hissed, cradling her hand to her chest. That was ridiculously stupid of her. Why had she even stopped to inspect the carvings? Kylo Ren couldn’t be far behind, she had to put some distance-

Something rumbled in the air around her.

Something that came from the entrance to the mountain.

Rey backed up a few feet, but couldn’t take her eyes off of the stone. The carvings around the entrance started to shift out of the corner of her eye, turning to an onyx black that absorbed the faint moonlight into absolute darkness. The warmth she felt from the stone chilled, and the ground shifted ever so slightly under her feet.

The entrance began to open. The great stone slabs that held the entrance closed slid back like an old beast, growling loudly as it scraped against the ground. Rey watched as it opened, further and further, until the stone had pulled back all the way. It left a wide, triangular mouth in the rocky mountainside.

It was – _very dark_ , inside the mouth. It felt like looking into the void.

A blast of air escaped from inside, frigid and stale. It smelled old, like eroding rock and a thousand-year-old condensation. It sounded like a breath.

Like something had just awoken.

A shiver ran down Rey’s spine.

There was no way in the _galaxy_ she would set foot in there. Whatever that place was, it didn’t feel good. The Force pressed against her chest so heavily she had difficulty breathing – and that _feeling_. That _rotting_ feeling came from inside there. No. The Force had never been _dark_ or _light_ to her in the way that it was for Luke, but-

This place felt exactly like that. The dark side. It felt _evil_.

And that feeling – that _cold breath_ – was calling to her. That unnerved her more than anything.

Rey turned to go back, but halted in her steps.

There he was, less than twenty meters away. The moonlight hid all but his outline from her eyes. The silver of his mask glinted in the small light, cold and unfeeling. He was alone, which almost surprised her – or, it should’ve surprised her. He already gripped lightsaber in his hand, and it was activated; he had come for a fight.

Kylo Ren was there to take his revenge.

To kill her.

“There’s nowhere for you to run, _scavenger_.” His voice echoed off of the canyon walls, bouncing his murderous intent around in her ears. The Force rolled off of him in thick, noxious waves. It made her want to physically recoil, but she held her ground. She would not let herself flinch in front of him.

Backing down was not an option.

He didn’t appear to noticed the entrance at her back. The hair on the back of her neck stood on-end; she felt like she was flanked by monsters on both sides.

Rey unclipped her own lightsaber and thumbed the ignition. That said enough.

Kylo Ren started to advance towards her, climbing the incline of rocks with more ease than she had. Rey backed up half a step, trying to swallow her heart back into her chest. Rage and frustration filled her. If only she wasn’t wounded, she would have a greater chance to beat him. Why did _he_ have to follow her all of the way out here, wherever this Force-forsaken place was?

Rey hated him for following her.

She hated him for having the advantage.

She just-

_Hated_ him.

The only advantage she had was that she held the high ground. Besides that, she was wounded and aching, and he was neither. It seemed their places had switched from their last confrontation.

But she wouldn’t let it end for her the same way it had for him back on Starkiller.

Kylo Ren was close enough to make out the folds in his robes, the lines on his mask. He would be on her in moments. She had to think fast.

Throwing out her hand, she sent the strongest blast of Force down the slope that she could manage. It very nearly knocked Kylo Ren off of his feet, but he crouched and wedged his hand in a rock to steady himself. His dark cape flapped behind him like a burned, twisted wing.

The power Rey used surprised her. Normally, she couldn’t focus well enough to direct that much energy anywhere. But something in the air felt electric, charged in a way she found easy to draw from. She didn’t know whether that should have unnerved her or not.

Kylo Ren stayed where he was even after she stopped using the Force. He stood slowly, his lightsaber still spitting angrily his his grip. Rey felt the surprise spike off of him, too.

“Is that all you’ve got, scavenger?” He sneered, the modulator in his mask distorting his voice.

“You know it’s not,” she shot back. “Is that why you’re hiding?” She demanded, “Did I ruin your _face_?”

_Force_ , she hoped that she had.

His snarl was audible through his mask. “You got _lucky_ –and I wasn’t _trying_ to kill you. That’s a mistake I plan to rectify.”

Irritation snapped in Rey’s chest and her pride spoke for her. “You’re welcome to try.”

Actions had to back up words, and the second the words were out of her mouth she was afraid she couldn’t. She mentally kicked herself.

Rey tried to sense her surroundings, tried to find a path or _something_ – just a way out of her immediate situation, but there was nothing. Nothing but the monster making his way towards her and the yawning abyss at her back.

For a moment she debated which would be worse.

Then she didn’t have time, because Kylo Ren was _there_ and she needed to go on the offensive before she was forced into defense. Leaning into a downward sweep as much as she could, Rey blocked the end of his advance. Darting to the side, he brought up his lightsaber in a sloppy swing at her wrist, more designed to get her away from him than to do any real damage.

With his long legs he easily made up the difference made by the incline, at once rendering her advantage moot. He moved around her flank, bringing his saber up then down, forcing her to block both blows before she could get another swing in. The weight of his attacks were heavier than she remembered – maybe she really _had_ only gotten lucky on Starkiller, maybe he hadn’t been lying when he said – and they forced her back a step, then another. Kylo Ren wasted no time in pressing his advance, filling each step she gave up and continuously pushing for more.

Rey grunted against the strength of his third blow, a diagonal sweep at her midsection. She had to twist her grip in an awkward way to be able to stop it before his strike landed.

The blood on her hand made her grip slippery, and she could feel her skin ripping further when she stretched her hand. A few drops of blood fell onto their locked blades, sizzling out of existence as soon as they made contact.

His mask tilted down, slightly.

Rey grit her teeth.

“Did you hurt yourself in the crash?” His voice sounded anything by sympathetic.

“Go to hell,” she snapped.

“You’ve made this easy on me.”

Rey growled, shoving with all of her might. In a move that was purely instinct, she twisted their blades around so that she was the one controlling their saber lock, but the move made her arms and back ache. Even this prolonged push against Kylo Ren’s lightsaber was tiring her out.

She needed to put some distance between them.

Kylo Ren might have been stronger than her, and not wounded besides, but she was faster. Smaller. Spinning to his side unbalanced him and broke their saber lock. Ducking under his arm, Rey moved behind him with enough momentum to sweep her lightsaber up across his back.

Payback for Finn. Payback for herself-

But he used his unbalance and swept his lightsaber in an arc as he nearly feel to his knees. Rey had to jump back, and slammed herself against one of the obelisks.

A gasp tore from her mouth as her bruised back came into solid contact with the stone. Any opening Kylo might have given her, any tiny advantage she might have won, was wasted when she had to take a moment, as well.

The ground rumbled underneath their feet, but neither paid it any mind.

Kylo was on her again slower than she expected, but then there he was, swinging his lightsaber in wide, one-armed arcs. Rey blocked one blow, then another, then darted out of his reach. He lunged forward with a growl, lightsaber aimed nowhere in particular.

The ground shifted again.

Rey felt that cold, stale breath at the back of her neck. That _rotting_ breath-

The ground groaned and shuddered under them. The two of them paused, their attention suddenly fixed on the ground. Then the ground started to collapse, shifting and tilting like sand. Rey lost her footing almost immediately, and Kylo Ren followed soon after. The ground opened up like the planet had finally decided to swallow its inhabitants.

Down they fell, and the darkness engulfed them like a tomb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it took a little longer than I wanted for me to update, I had to iron out some kinks in the story. As it turns out, this is probably going to be more of Kylo's story than it is Rey's. Of course, it's _both_ of their story, but in the long-run I'm fairly certain that he's going to be a little more central. Usually rey is the central figure in my stories, so this should be fun!
> 
> Anyway, I'm sorry for this awful chapter but we've got to get the ball rolling somehow. Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

Ancient words, whispered in the dark.

There was-

 _Something_.

Meaning hovered just beyond Kylo Ren’s understanding, like he was trying to understand familiar words being spoken backwards. But discerning intent was easier.

Want.

Waking _hunger_ -

Kylo jolted back into awareness. Confusion clouded his thoughts and pain muddled his mind. For a moment the darkness made him think he had awoken in his master’s lower chambers, that he had succumbed to weakness and had failed to endure his reprimand-

But, no. No, he had not yet faced his master’s reprimand. He had _sidetracked_ -

It came back to him like a spark. The Resistance, the scavenger. They had fallen through the earth.

He wasn’t crushed by rock, however. And he wasn’t in complete darkness, either. The visor on his helmet was cracked, but he could tell that he was – somewhere. First he took a moment to make sure he was still in one piece, that nothing had impaled him and that his half-healed wounds hadn’t torn open. The one in his shoulder had during his brief scuffle with the scavenger, but as far as he could tell he was in one piece otherwise. He slowly reached up and pulled his helmet off; it was too hard to see with the damned thing on.

Kylo’s throat closed when his vision wasn’t obscured by a cracked visor and he saw where he was. His grip on his helmet tightened.

Impossibly, he was lying at the end of a long hallway. There was no break in the stone above him, no indication of how he got there at all. The smooth-cut stone led farther down than he could make out. Dark red light glowed softly from the edges of the floor all along the corridor. He didn’t know where the light came from, but he recognized the style of the carvings along the walls well enough.

The angular architecture was unmistakable; he had been in one other place just like this years ago, when that _dead boy_ had still traveled with Skywalker, had still hung on his every word and hoped that the old man could teach him. The boy had _prayed_ to the Force, because Skywalker had been the only one who could teach him to break his darkness, to shove it _away_ in the back of his mind and pretend it wasn’t _there_ -

It was a temple, or maybe a tomb.

Either way, it was _Sith_.

He could feel the power that filled the air and vibrated off the stone walls. It was _old_ power, long-buried. And When Kylo reached out in an attempt to find the scavenger – because she would have killed him if she had woken up first, and there was no sight of her anywhere – the power in that tomb churned his stomach and pulled at his mind like a needle stringing thread through his brain until he could take it no longer and snatched his senses back to himself.

It took him a moment to compose himself, to settle his stomach and quiet the buzz growing in his mind. Whatever lingered in this temple – or _tomb_ – had festered for so long it was corrupted, rotten in the way only ancient things were.

And – there was a _presence_. The thing encased in this place. The thing that pulled at his mind.

Something that had once been powerful.

A needle and thread, pulling him closer.

Kylo wanted nothing more than to not be there.

It was all the _scavenger’s_ fault.

He needed to kill her. He needed to leave.

He pushed himself to his feet, clutching his helmet in one hand and his lightsaber in the other. He kept his thumb on the ignition switch, just in case.

There was only one way to go, so he walked down the stone corridor. The carving on the walls seemed to shift a little with each step, like a shadow moving in the corner of his eye. The red light was – strange. It was almost as if he could smell it. _Taste_ it.

It tasted metallic.

The corridor curved once to the left, and then the the right a little further down. Lower and lower he walked, down a slope so minor it took him a while before he even noticed he was going down at all. Kylo felt like he had been walking for the better part of an hour when the hallway finally opened up into a small chamber. Everything, the architecture, the lighting, the carving in the walls, looked the same. There were two more passageways, one on either side of the chamber, that led to Force-knew where. He sensed only empty, old darkness everywhere.

The center of the chamber was empty. There was nothing there – just an empty room leading left or right.

Kylo tightened his grip on his lightsaber as he stepped further into the chamber. He kept his senses sharp, stretched out around him.

Places like these usually had traps.

He took another step forward, and sprung one of them.

All at once, people and walls bled into existence around him. He felt the rumble underneath his feet as if he was standing on a star destroyer, he felt a swirl of _anticipation_ and _fear_ from those who had materialized around him. Even he felt-

A hand clamped on his shoulder.

“-ready to fight?”

The person in front of him wasn’t familiar, not to Kylo. And yet he was familiar, because Kylo suddenly wasn’t Kylo, either. Whoever he was in that moment recognized the person with his hand on his shoulder.

That person was a friend.

Not-Kylo nodded and activated his lightsaber. It wasn’t red.

None of the Lightsabers were; all of the people around him had activated their blades, as well, and all of their blades burned every color but red. White-hot execution blades still masquerading as something Jedi.

 _Righteous_. Noble. No matter the cost, what they were doing was-

Everything tore apart around him, and for a brief moment he was Kylo again. Then the darkness moved and shifted like a vortex, and he was once more Not-Kylo. The very Force tore at him, at his very _cells_ , trying to rip him apart. To _kill_ him.

It was what he imagined being jettisoned into the vacuum of space would feel like, only infinitely worse.

The pain was unending. It wouldn’t _stop_.

The Force. The Force was being _ripped_ out of him; he was going to die, he was going to die, _hewasgoingtodie_ -

No.

 _No_. Not like this. His _will_ – he could close himself off, make it stop hurting. Reject what hurt him-

Die to the Force.

Die to the Force.

Not-Kylo acted on instinct, on the sheer will to live. Then everything happened too _fast_ and he didn’t know what he did; it was like falling asleep in the most painful way imaginable-

Kylo collapsed to the ground, and the vision evaporated into thin air.

Gasping for breath, he tried to get his blood to settle, his heart to slow. The only noise in the chamber was the sound of his own breathing, bouncing off the stone walls like a reminder that he was alone. It had all been a vision, nothing more. He was alone.

The thought didn’t comfort him much.

This place was dangerous.

For a moment he stared at his helmet, which had slipped from his grip onto the floor next to his feet. It was a piece of familiarity – of _identity_ – and it reminded him of himself. The person in the vision had not been him.

Kylo hated to admit that he had trouble calming himself, that for a brief moment he had been completely swept up-

A ripple in the Force reached out through the old darkness that surrounded him. His attention snapped to the corridor to his right.

 _The scavenger_.

For a brief moment-

He _knew_ it was her. He felt it.

Pushing himself back to his feet, Kylo snatched up his helmet and headed the direction of the ripple. Towards _her_.

She was likely caught up in the same presence he was. Perhaps he could use that to his advantage; as much as the power bleeding through the stone affected him, he was fairly certain that it would be worse for her. Surely, a girl with no training would be completely swept up.

 _Surely_. He wouldn’t make the same mistake as last time.

His animosity pushed him forwards. He wasn’t even aware of how long he walked down that corridor, or how many turns he made. All he felt was the weight of his saber in his hand and the swimming darkness.

The scavenger’s presence was little more than a breath against his neck. The faintest echo. He followed it relentlessly.

He followed it until he came to another chamber, this one nearly twice as large as the last, and filled with bones. There were piles everywhere, ancient, forgotten bodies that had been there for – it was impossible to say. A millennia, perhaps. There was a thick film of dust over everything.

Kylo spotted the scavenger almost immediately. She was pressed up against the opposite side of the chamber, dressed in the same dirty desert robes she had worn when they had first met and holding his grandfather’s lightsaber in front of her. The glow of his grandfather’s blade cast her stoney expression in a cold light.

She looked straight out of his memory.

How could he ever forget that moment in the snow, that look on her face? His blood boiled in response. She had looked _exactly_ like that right before they had fought-

Tossing his helmet to the side, Kylo thumbed the activation button on his lightsaber. The angry red of his blade did little to illuminate the room; its light didn’t even reach the scavenger.

He could sense her feelings distantly, like looking through a piece of distorted transparisteel, or when he had tried to see out his cracked visor. It felt _strange_ , now that he was closer. She didn’t feel like that; the scavenger was a beacon of untapped power and emotion, not some fog-like wisp in the back of his head. And the nearer he drew, the foggier she became.

Even then, it wasn’t until he stepped into the center of the room that he realized.

She wasn’t looking at him. She wasn’t even moving at all. And his lightsaber still cast no light on her.

She was-

Just an illusion. She wasn’t there.

A frown tugged at his lips. Unthinking, Kylo stepped closer to the image of the scavenger girl. His boot brushed against one of the piles of bones, but he didn’t notice.

He didn’t notice until the bones sprang to life.

Energy exploded like a rush of water, an explosion of darkness, and the bones unfolded themselves into twisting, _sharp_ things. They moved like they didn’t know what it meant to truly be living, like they couldn’t remember. Shadows held the bones together and they gave them form. A sort of face.

They looked like the monsters out of children’s stories. Out of _nightmares_. And they surrounded him on all sides.

Sharp hissing pierced Kylo’s skull.

The shadow monsters started screeching. If the noises they made were meant to be words then they were lost on Kylo, who buckled over from the shock of the pain in his head. The pain _tore_ at his head, pounded his eardrums.

He didn’t feel his lightsaber slip from his fingers. He only felt pain.

A cry ripped from his throat. He tried to cover his ears, but nothing _helped_ the monsters kept on _screeching_ and _screeching_ -

Shadow and bone rushed him all at once. A hundred shadows broke against him like a wave, half absorbing into his skin and half dissipating into the air. The bones beat at him all at once, like they were trying to beat him to death. Every inch of him felt the brunt of the monsters. He even felt the darkness sinking inside, like ink spilling on paper.

Kylo Ren became _drenched_ in darkness and pain.

He collapsed to his knees-

But as soon as he hit the ground, the monsters disappeared. Breathing heavily, trying to control himself and ignore the vile darkness that felt so foreign under his skin, Kylo straightened his shoulders and tried to pretend that he had been in control. That the Supreme Leader was watching him.

If his master had been watching-

Well. A few visions was nothing. _Less_ than nothing. He tried to keep perspective.

Kylo checked his ears – because his ears were still ringing and he felt something _warm_ – his fingers came away with blood coating his gloves. He wiped the blood away, snatching up his lightsaber and pushing himself to his feet.

There wasn’t a bone in the entire chamber. Not even one.

Gripping his saber so tightly he thought it might crush it, Kylo tried to ignore the urge to _explode_ and turn the room into a thousand molten scars. Rage replaced fear in an instant, a snap reaction, but it burned out almost just as quickly.

The way he had come was now simply a wall, as if a door had never been there at all. But the way forward was clear where it hadn’t been before. The exit was right behind where his vision of the scavenger had been.

This time, he didn’t linger in the room after he had the vision.

The corridor turned left almost immediately, then right. Down, down he went. Further and further, until the darkest corners of the stone looked to be stars. Kylo nearly felt that he was going insane, but still the stars stayed, dark and darker under the earth.

Everything around him felt empty. Devoid of anything. Just-

 _Void_.

Nothing.

Even the Force started to feel faint, barely more than a trickle in the back of his skull. The energy it took to gather it around him became tiring, then exhausting.

Then the corridor – _finally_ – ended. He came to a door that looked like it hadn’t been disturbed in a thousand years, but – a door that looked like it belonged on a capital ship. It was made of thick durasteel, and it looked as if it had been manufactured and installed in the corridor the same way it would have if it had been installed on a ship.

Kylo knew he had to be going crazy. First the _stars_ , then the _door_ -

When his glove touched the metal, the door groaned. Then it budged, and opened. It opened like it was nothing.

It opened onto a half-destroyed ship’s bridge.

Stars gleamed from a million pinpricks above him. A planet of brown and green peaked from below. The bridge deck was huge, but it was half gone. And there was no hull above him.

From stone to a starship.

It was deathly quiet.

Kylo walked out onto the bridge, leaving the stone corridor behind. Each step he made echoed for a moment, then was swallowed by the silence.

Step, swallow. Step, swallow.

The sound of his heartbeat echoed in his head, louder than everything but his breath and the sound of his boots hitting the metal grating. The Force retreated from his senses even further, until it was nothing more than a faint thrum at the corner of his mind. A twitch at his fingertips.

He drew nearer and nearer to the edge of the bridge, the edge of _space_. The edge of his _senses_. If he went much farther, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to sense anything at all – but in a place like this, with this much _power_ , it had to be worth it.

If he could just get to the end-

If he could just find some artifact of the dark side-

The Supreme Leader would value such a discovery. An amends for his latest failures. An amend for deviating to this planet in the first place. He didn’t delude himself into thinking anything he might find could make up for his past actions, but it would perhaps go a ways in proving to his master that he was still _useful_ , that he still had _purpose_.

That thought drove him onwards, towards the darkest center of the bridge. He pushed all other caution aside, because the risk would be _worth_ it if it paid off.

He stepped closer to the edge of the remaining floor. The stars above him started to dim. The planet below began to fade.

Keeping the Force close to him was nearly impossible, it took so much energy.

He took another step.

Then another, right up to the edge of the floor where the metal twisted away into utter-

The bridge dissolved into nothingness. In the blink of an eye, space melted away, and he was torn from whatever vision that had been. He knew, somehow, that he had barely gone more than a few steps, that he had barely moved past the threshold of the door, not walked across a great expanse of ship. He had simply entered another room.

And there was nothing. Empty.

Just like the rest of this place.

Kylo stood in a chamber – _the_ chamber, the center of this entire labyrinth – that was filled with nothing but darkness. No light, no carvings, nothing. Not even the Force.

No.

It was as if the Force didn’t even exist in that place.

Kylo searched desperately for a spark, some tiny shadow of the Force to cling to. It felt like trying to breathe in water. There was nothing _there_. He couldn’t sense his master, couldn’t call on his own power, he couldn’t even sense the dark side that resided on the planet.

Nothing.

 _Nothing_.

He was alone.

In a moment of desperation – and insanity, too, because he had to be _insane_ to even _breathe_ the thought – he reached out to the scavenger, trying to sense anything. _Anyone_. He just needed-

Her presence came to him, clear as day. _She_ flooded his senses, more than he wanted but for the briefest second he didn’t mind. He was just grateful that he could _sense_ something again, even if it was her.

She felt close.

Very close. Not at all like when he had sensed her before in the vision, when she had been little more than a whisper in the back of his mind. This felt like the first time he had felt her call upon the Force. This time felt _powerful_ \- for a moment. A brief flash. Then her presence dimmed to almost nothing, like smothering a flame.

But it was enough. He could tell where she was.

He had not even noticed the near-shapeless lump on the other side of the large, dark chamber. He had to take a few unstable steps forwards to even determine that his sense were correct.

The scavenger lay completely prone on the floor. And this time, he knew it was her. It was the perfect opportunity-

A wave of nausea overtook him and Kylo’ knees buckled. He only just managed to catch himself before he fell face-first on the ground, overwhelmed by the revolutionary sensation of being the only alive thing in the center of an absolute absence in the Force. Or, one of two. Tremors wracked his frame, his stomach rolled and a cold sweat broke out across his forehead; his body didn’t know how to react to the sudden loss.

Fisting his hands against the stone, he pushed. Both physically and mentally. He forced himself to get _ahold_ of himself, to settle the unease in his stomach.

Mostly, he wasn’t successful. But he didn’t vomit, and that seemed good enough, for the moment. And after a few minutes, he was able to lean back on his haunches. A few minutes – or _hours_ – after that, he pushed himself back up to his feet. He nearly doubled over as soon as he straightened, but he didn’t let himself.

He focused on breathing exercises. Focused on not breaking down.

Kylo took in the echoing room with clenched fists. There had to be something _there_ , something to make this whole fucking disaster _worth_ something. He stubbornly ignored the girl on the floor. Ignored her even though she seemed to be the only thing left in the entire universe that was touched by the Force, the only thing he could sense at all. She was both a blessing and a curse, reminding him that he stood in a vortex of the abyss, cut off from his master and his power, from everything that gave him power. He hated that he could sense her, yet a part of him was simply grateful that he could still sense _anything_.

There was only one thing to distract him.

A single pedestal stood erect in the center of the chamber, just a simple slab of stone. The floor all around sloped down towards it, like it had weighed too much and had dented the stone it sat on.

There was something on the pedestal. It looked a little like a piece of bone.

Kylo knew instantly that the nothingness came from that thing. That whatever was so old about this place, so _rotten_ and _dark_ , was because of that.

It was powerful.

So, despite his overwhelming desire to turn away, Kylo drew closer. His stomach did somersaults with each step.

It was disgusting, his aversion to something so powerful. That’s what the Supreme Leader would have said. He could see it clearly in his head, his master’s disapproving tone. His own disgust at having such a sniveling apprentice. Kylo burned with hate and shame just by thinking about it, but he used the image to push him forward.

It wasn’t a piece of bone, he realized when he was close enough.

It was a mask.

White, like bone, but with dark slashes rising from the eyes and an even darker mark down the middle. Perhaps it was a mask fashioned from bone. It was too hard to see in the dark.

He reached out and ran his gloved fingers across the edge of it. A shiver ran down his spine.

Kylo picked up the mask.

He held his breath, waiting for – something. Something to happen. To feel something. _Something_.

But nothing did. The mask in his hands did nothing but echo, dark and lifeless. He felt _nothing_ from it. He felt the _nothing_ come from it.

It was like nothing he had ever felt before, that – _blankness_ , in the Force. It had to possess some sort of power to do that. He flipped the mask over in his hands, glancing at all it’s angles.

His master would appreciate it, if nothing else. A relic of the Sith. Because it had to be from the Sith. He had hoped for something more. A weapon, or a holocron.

Fuck.

This would do little to persuade his master away from anger, he realized.

Fuck.

He hadn’t even secured the scavenger yet. And if he was going to kill her-

The plan had been to tell the Supreme Leader that he had been unable to bring in the scavenger alive. He would have presented him with her corpse, swearing that he would have kept her alive if there had been any other way. His master would know that even if he hadn’t followed his orders to the letter, he was strong enough to defeat the scavenger.

Such a foolish, idiotic idea. The Supreme Leader would see through his lies. And after the delays, after the Resistance had managed to capture sensitive intel-

This mask would not be enough.

He had to bring the scavenger alive.

His gaze flickered over to where she lay prone on the floor, little more than a fuzzy shape in the darkness. She hadn’t moved a muscle, but he still sensed her consciousness clearly.

He breathed out through his nose.

Tucking the edge of the mask into his belt, Kylo crossed over to her. A part of him wanted her to jump up, to flash his grandfather’s lightsaber and give him a _reason_ -

But she didn’t. She didn’t stir at all, not even when he stood towering over her with his hand resting over where his lightsaber hung from his belt. Not even when his thumb ghosted over the ignition switch.

After a moment, Kylo growled in defeat. _Later_ , he promised himself. He could make her pay later. Crouching down beside her, he gathered the scavenger’s dead weight in his arms. It felt different from the last time he had done so; he felt more angry, less in control. He – _needed_ – her in a different way. The effort it took pulled at the semi-healed wound in his shoulder, the one that had already torn in their fight. His shirt started to stick to his shoulder.

The mask felt cold pressed against him, but the woman in his arms felt uncomfortably warm. He huffed and readjusted his grip slightly.

He considered setting the scavenger down while he searched for an exit, but he had a feeling that if he walked away from her he wouldn’t be able to find her again. So he carried her as he began to search for the exit.

There _had_ to be an exit.

Walking around the length of the chamber, Kylo realized it was more rectangular in shape than he had originally thought. The room stretched on and on, until the pedestal had long been lost to the darkness behind him. The ground began to slope up, just slightly.

Around him, the walls became more narrow. There were carvings along the stone again.

Kylo stopped and glanced behind him. Not ten paces back was a slab of stone, the end of a hall. It was as if he had come from nowhere.

Like he had never been in the chamber at all.

He continued down the hall, mostly because there was nowhere else to go. The strange red lights lit the ground for a ways, but eventually cut off, leaving him in nearly absolute literal darkness. The Force started to come back to him enough that he could sense his way forward, but it was still distant, like trying to listen to someone speaking while underwater. And it took twice as much energy as it should have.

The scavenger weighed in his arms, no heavier than she had been the first time he had carried her, but still a constant strain on his already worn muscles. His fingers dug into her ribs, her knee as a tremor ran through his arms.

He focused on breathing in through his nose, out through his mouth. He didn’t let himself sink into the need to _rest_ , or the urge to rage against the stone walls until he could claw his own way _out_ -

He just focused on breathing.

And eventually, it started to get lighter. He felt the air shift subtly, just enough. A draft.

The hall was half-collapsed several meters ahead, but it was still open enough to squeeze through. And beyond that, it sloped up, little more than sand and rock. And-

 _Light_.

He could see the light of day.

Kylo didn’t waste a moment. He maneuvered himself and the scavenger through the rubble, through the crumbling stone and up the sloping hill. The last part was fairly difficult, because he needed to grab purchase of something to steady himself as he climbed, but his arms were already filled with the scavenger. Throwing his weight around further than usual and using the scavenger’s weight as a counterbalance, he climbed back to the surface.

He nearly collapsed as soon as he stood free of the earth, he was so glad to see the sky. It was hazy blue, the color only really beautiful in comparison where it touched the sand and red mountains on the horizon. It was midday. Also near to the horizon, two of the planet’s moons were still faintly visible.

Kylo heaved a great sigh, relief flooding through his veins.

Finally, he let himself sink to his knees, each one hitting the ground hard. He put the scavenger on the ground and sat back, taking in his surroundings. They were on the side of a mountain, although he didn’t recognize anything else around him. There were no stone pillars, no entrance into the mountain, no carvings, no hole in the ground. Perhaps they were on the far side of the mountain, now. He didn’t care much.

The comm tucked into his belt crackled to life.

“- _ir? Lord Ren, do you read? I repeat_ -”

Kylo snatched his comm. “Captain.”

There was a moment’s pause. “ _Ah, good. Lord Ren, you’ve been off our scanners for hours, are you in need assistance_?”

It was only then that he realized he had left his helmet underground.

Kylo’s irritation spiked high as the mountain at his back. He made sure to sound like he had everything under control, but he clenched the comm so tightly it hurt his palm. “I have apprehended one of the thieves and need extraction.”

“ _Very well, sir. I’ll send a shuttle_.”

He didn’t bother responding. For a moment, he considered throwing the comm with all of his might, just to destroy something. He clutched the comm and worked the muscles in his jaw, debating, but in the end he just turned it off and shoved it back in its place. He moved back to the scavenger, who still hadn't stirred beyond the constant rise and fall of her chest, and picked her up once more. Ignoring the thorough ache in his bones, and the sharp sting as he reopened the wound in his shoulder even further, he started to make his way down the mountain.

The mask started to feel warmer against him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If this chapter has a lot of weird typos towards the end, it's because I was editing it at 3am and I apologize. Anyway, I'm _also_ sorry if this chapter was strange and boring, but it's actually pretty important for what's to come. Kylo's visions turned out way more on-the-nose than I had planned and I feel like I've just given everything away, but oh well!
> 
> Thank you guys so much for reading and reviewing, you are literally the only reason I can get myself to actually finish these chapters sometimes. You're so awesome!


	4. Chapter 4

The captain was waiting for Kylo onboard the _Finalizer_. He felt a brief flash of surprise from the man – the same surprise Kylo felt from every trooper who saw him without his helmet – but he recovered quickly. Mostly, the captain felt almost as irritated as he did anxious, although he kept a professional expression screwed firmly in place. Kylo’s boots had barely touched the hangar deck before he was right by his side, speaking to him in a clipped tone.

“General Hux has contacted us several times. He is quite impatient for the return of his ship, and seemed suspicious when I informed him of the delay-”

“I don’t care what Hux thinks.”

The captain pursed his lips, straightened his shoulders a little. “The Supreme Leader has also made contact. I have been instructed to urge you to speak to him at once.”

A sharp chill shot down Kylo’s spine, like the tip of a knife.

The Supreme Leader had not been pleased the last time they had spoken, had in fact ordered him to return and face his punishment in person. Kylo knew his reprimand would be worse now that he had turned and chased after the Resistance – after _her_ – and had delayed his punishment even further. The Supreme Leader would have something to say about that.

Even with the Sith artifact, even with the scavenger, it wouldn’t be enough. Actions had consequences.

The Supreme Leader would be sure that he remembered that lesson.

He stopped and slowly turned on the captain. He had to remind himself to keep his expression under control, that he no longer had the buffer of his mask to protect him from prying eyes. “The Supreme Leader is angry?” He echoed, grateful that his voice came out low and steady, and for once did not betray him. “Last I checked, the Supreme Leader didn’t give orders directly to _captains_.”

A moment of silence stretched between them. Kylo watched the captain’s neck turn red, watched as a vein bulged right down the center of his forehead. He drew himself to his full and average height.

“He is not pleased with the delay,” is all the captain said in return.

Kylo felt that same shiver raise the hair on his neck. He clenched his fists.

“Noted.”

Frustration twisted in his chest. In that moment, he wished more than anything that he still had his helmet. He wished the captain wasn’t able look him in the eye and speak to him as if he was some _child_. The helmet made everyone afraid – even this captain, who puffed out his chest and pretended that Kylo was obliged to listen to his inane babble. He itched to stretch out his hand and remind him who had _actual_ power, whose strength didn’t come from other men but from the ability to touch the Force. He had an awareness of the universe that the captain would never have, _could_ never have. The Supreme Leader himself had told him-

The Supreme Leader. Kylo’s breath hitched. He had to make contact at once, to give a progress report. To minimize damage, if that was even possible anymore. He had to accept his punishment-

Movement in the corner of his eye snatched his attention. Two troopers dragged the scavenger down the ramp, each holding one of her arms. Kylo had cuffed her wrists as soon as he had boarded the shuttle and she was still as unconscious as when he had found her, but he remembered how resourceful she was.

Better to be safe.

Better to overestimate her.

A part of him felt compelled to take her from them, to personally deliver her to a cell and strap her down himself, just to be sure she wouldn’t escape again. Or perhaps to delay the inevitable. He despised that part of him, the part that wanted to _cower_ from the lessons his master would teach. And there was still that part of him that wished she would wake up and force his hand.

But, of course, that would be making things easier on him. The scavenger would never do that.

He barked his orders at the troopers carrying her. “Take her to the maximum security cell. If she wakes up, shoot her.” He made to leave, his palms already starting to sweat at the thought of his master, but paused. Pressed his lips together.

She looked fairly awful in the artificial lighting of the hangar. More wounded than he had realized. _Bloodier_. There was a small smear of dried blood on her arm from where she had pressed against the wound in his shoulder, but the rest of the blood that trickled down her skin, that stained her clothes, was hers. He assumed.

“Use the stun setting,” he added after a moment.

“Yes, sir.”

He turned and strode out of the hangar.

The way to the communications chamber was both too long and far too short. Kylo covered the ground as quickly as he could, taking long strides past clusters of confused troops. Most had the presence of mind to look away and pretend they couldn’t see him, _truly_ see him, but there were a few who stared. If it had been another time, he would’ve made them regret their gawking.

He had no time for that now. No time and no inclination, if he was being honest. The mere thought of the coming conversation twisted his gut in knots. His punishment would be worse for disobeying the Supreme Leader.

Again.

His half-healed wounds ached as he walked – the burns on his shins, the still-open wound in his shoulder – but the pain left his mind when he punched in the door code and stepped into the chamber set aside for direct communication with the leader of the First Order.

The door slide shut behind him.

It was always dark in that chamber. There was a chill in the air, and it had a vicious bite to it that cut straight through his robes. His blood felt boiling hot in his veins in uncomfortable contrast. Displeasure reverberated off the very walls, turning the air so thick it felt like noxious fog. Just residual energy, the barest shadow of his master’s presence. Kylo had difficulty breathing through all the darkness.

A hologram flickered to life, filling the other end of the chamber. Power nearly drowned him.

He sank to his knees like a stone in water.

“Supreme Leader.”

His heart sputtered and thudded. _Ached_ in despicable fear.

Silence echoed across the chamber, sharp and damning. He did not dare look to see the expression on his master’s face; he knew it well enough by the quiet poison in the air. His throat tightened.

A long, rough inhale shattered the quiet.

“I have been informed that you lost the locations of the First Order research facilities.”

Kylo froze. In truth, he had forgotten the intel the Resistance had stolen. With all that had happened – he hadn’t thought about it once. What did he care about that information, about those places where men discovered weapons and bacta and new ways to torture, he nearly let himself think – except that it was his _failure_ for having lost them. Another of many failures. _Too_ many.

He swallowed. “Supreme Leader-”

But the Supreme Leader only raised his voice.

“And where is the general, I wonder? It seems that you’ve abandoned one of the highest members of the Order to be captured and killed by enemy troops. As we speak, the Resistance moves on his base.”

Kylo finally raised his head to meet the Supreme Leader’s gaze. Sitting back in his throne, hands folded in his lap, his master looked almost deceptively calm. Almost bored, even – if not for his expression. Dark fire lit up his glassy eyes even through the hologram, his mouth twisted with ire and rage.

Another wave of power slammed into Kylo, another reminder of his master’s power. His displeasure.

“I did not know-” he forced his tongue to move, tried to force himself to swallow and to not break out in a cold sweat. His stomach roiled in his gut. He fisted his hand against the floor. “I was unaware that the Resistance had discovered the base.”

Electricity crackled in the air, the Supreme Leader’s build-up of fury all at once palpable, manifesting in the air. The energy felt cold as ice and dark as spilled ink, but sharp as a knife. Freezing electricity. Kylo’s muscles tensed in reaction to pain that had not come yet.

_Consequences_.

This was his punishment.

His master leaned forward in his throne, just a little. “I am so disappointed in you. Kylo Ren. So much power, but so,” he paused. Inhaled.

“Weak.”

Power speared him, unleashed from the very air. He didn’t even try and guard against it.

Like a thousand knife-like tentacles, Supreme Leader Snoke broke into Kylo’s mind. The needles spread out like a hand, searching his thoughts and memories for nothing and everything, intent on causing as much suffering as possible. White-hot agony followed the freezing tentacles like a wake, compounding and _freezing_ and _burning_ -

Punishment.

Weakness.

He knew nothing but those words, and the pain. The excruciating feeling of being sliced open by the power of something so powerful and dark. All other thought fled his mind.

He forgot his name.

He forgot everything.

There was just-

In a wild moment of terror, he thought his brain was being shredded into a thousand pieces, blood and brain matter splattering across the floor in an explosion of _meat_ and _bones_ as his master finally decided that he had outlived his usefulness-

Then the pain stopped. The tentacles of the Supreme Leader’s power left his body. Or, what was left of his body.

But, no. No. He was still in one piece.

Still alive. He could see his hand-

Only then did he realize that he had collapsed on the floor, and that he had been crying out in his agony. _Screaming_. His throat felt sore, and his face burned. A shameful wetness streaked his cheeks, trails of tears that only made his face burn hotter. He could see the little droplets on the floor, blood and tears, and he _hated_ them.

He tasted blood on his lips.

Slowly, shakily, he reached up and wiped under his nose. Blood smeared on his glove. He couldn’t quite find the strength to push himself up, yet.

“What is that?” His master demanded.

It took Kylo several moments to gather his thoughts, to pull himself out of his own shame and the residual pain that still twitched through his body. To understand what he had been asked.

The Supreme Leader leaned forward in his holographic throne, his robes shifting with his movements. His demeanor had changed entirely. He looked – interested. Intrigued.

In what? He couldn’t remember.

Kylo’s brain felt numb.

“The artifact you found,” the Supreme Leader snapped, gestured towards his belt. “Show it to me.”

So he did. Fumbling for only a moment, Kylo yanked the mask out of his belt and held it up for his master to see. It felt – _strange_ , in his hands. Cold. It thrummed in his grip like the low rumble of a beast. In his weakened state, he felt as if it might make him vomit.

For a moment, he very nearly dropped it.

There was something twisted about the thing he held. Something rotten and _empty_. Something mesmerizing. He hadn’t noticed how strong it was, before. Even stuck in that – temple, tomb, _whatever_ it had been – he hadn’t realized just how wrong it felt to touch it. Out out of place it felt in the Force.

It felt-

Revolting.

Magnetic.

_Wrong_.

He couldn’t believe he had kept it in his belt as long as he had. He should have thrown it away, back on the planet-

But the Supreme Leader seemed mesmerized by the mask. He studied it with an all-consuming focus that Kylo had seen few times before. Kylo clenched his jaw, reminding himself that that was the entire point of bringing the mask back with him.

He needed this mask.

“Where did you find this?” His master asked after what seemed like years. His tone of voice became hushed, almost – _reverent_.

It was getting harder and harder not to toss the artifact clear across the chamber. Or to just let himself collapse. Kylo gripped it tighter, grateful for his gloves that at least offered some sort of buffer. He would not want to touch it with his bare hands. “I found it while I was searching for the Resistance spies.”

Supreme Leader Snoke said nothing, simply continued to study the artifact. Kylo took the opportunity to add, “One of the spies was the scavenger.”

_The_ scavenger. They both knew who he referred to. The Supreme Leader straightened, finally taking his eyes off the mask. His demeanor hardened, but it was still far better than it had been moments before.

“Did you find her?”

“Yes.”

“Did you _catch_ her?”

His fingers ached with how tightly he gripped the mask. “Yes.”

The Supreme Leader leaned back in his throne once more, his expression turning unreadably blank. He seemed to be done with punishing him, for now. “Set a course to retrieve general Hux and his men,” his tone brokered no argument, “then bring both the mask and the girl to me.”

Kylo bowed his head. “Yes, Supreme Leader.”

The hologram flickered as his master pointed one long, boney finger in his direction.

“Do not fail me a final time, Kylo Ren.”

Air caught in his lungs. Residual pain flickered across his spine.

_Final_.

He bowed his head.

“I won’t.” Kylo’s tongue felt like sandpaper.

There was a pause, just long enough that he felt the beginnings of dread creep up around his hairline. The hologram remained unmoving out of the corner of his eye.

“Keep the artifact on your room. Keep it close.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader.”

The hologram flickered off, shrouding the chamber in darkness once more. Somehow, that final order did nothing to relieve the dread twisting its way into his head. The sudden urge to be rid of that mask gnawed at his thoughts, and he wanted nothing more than to march over to the nearest airlock and space the cursed thing.

No. No, he was just on edge. In _pain_. The mask had served its purpose; he knew that his punishment would have gone on for much longer if he had not had it. It was simply the _purity_ of darkness he felt from the mask. It only revealed his own fractured resolution all the more – _that_ was why it felt wrong to him. That was why.

But, even then. To keep it in his room-

He stuffed the mask back in his belt.

 

* * *

 

 

Moving around was a little painful, but he welcomed it. Wallowed in it. Tried to learn the lesson.

Kylo stopped by the bridge only briefly to find that the captain had already set a course to rendezvous with Hux. The officer’s gaze flickered across his face, and Kylo realized that he must have looked as poorly as he felt. All the officers likely already knew of the Supreme Leader’s displeasure, how it was directed at him. Hux would doubtless find out as soon as he came onboard.

_Fuck_.

Without a word, he turned and stormed off the bridge.

The mask pressed against his side with each sharp step. He clenched his fists in an effort to keep himself from bolting towards his rooms so he could finally get it off his person, despite the fact that his shins felt worse than ever, as if they had been burned all over again, and that his body felt generally like one massive bruise.

He had nearly made it to the turbolift when a pair of troopers stopped him.

“Lord Ren, sir.” Kylo had noticed that none of the stormtroopers really knew what to call him. They all said something different. He didn’t really care what they called him.

He barely turned his head. “What is it?”

“The prisoner has been put in a maximum security cell.”

_Move her to an interrogation room_. The words were on the tip of his tongue in a flash, a nearly automatic response. He had no intention of interrogating her. Not again. She wasn’t worth the _trouble_. He just wanted her to be as uncomfortable as possible. He wanted to unsettle her.

He was in _pain_ , and he wanted-

“No one is to speak to her.” He struggled to control his voice, against the urge to snap at the soldiers and throw them into the wall. Or to simply jump in the turbolift and collapse. “Don’t give her a chance to use her powers.”

“Yes, sir.”

The turbolift opened. Kylo stepped in and jammed the control. “And inform me as soon as she wakes up,” he added before the door slid shut.

The stormtroopers nodded. “Yes, sir.”

As soon as the turbolift started to move, Kylo wiped at his face. Furiously, he clawed at the dried tears and the blood and the sweat. Tried uselessly to rid himself of those traitorous signs of weakness and failure. The entire ship may as well have seen him like that; no doubt the troopers were already telling their fellows about his red rimmed eyes, his wet cheeks and bloodied nose. Everyone on the bridge had seen him.

Shit.

_Shit_.

He pressed his gloved fingers against his eyes. Then he slammed his fist into the wall with a growl. What he wouldn’t have _given_ to have his helmet. He needed another made-

But, what was the point? He had already ruined his reputation. He was certain of it.

It was all-

It was the _scavenger’s_ fault. If he hadn’t chased after her in the first place, hadn’t bothered to ease his wounded pride, then he wouldn’t have lost his _fucking_ helmet. He was worse off now than he had been before.

Kylo dropped his hand.

_Pathetic_.

The turbolift didn’t move fast enough. By the time it let him out on the level of his room he was practically pacing around in the small enclosure.

No one else bothered him on his way, the smallest mercy.

As soon as he stepped into his room, he barricaded the door behind him. He took only a moment to place the mask on a shelf in the corner of his room. Then he tore off his cloak and belt and outer robes, quickly followed by the rest of it.

In the privacy of his ‘fresher, kylo took inventory of his wounds. There were a few more cuts and bruises from his fight with the scavenger. His punishments had reopened the burns in his shins, which didn’t seem to want to close all the way. The half-healed scar on his face and neck bled a little, torn open in spots, and the wound in his shoulder had been completely reopened. Even the burn in his side, the gut shot that had been fully healed, was open and raw. It seemed his master wanted him to remember all of it, _earn_ the right to heal properly. He winced when he prodded at his gut with his finger.

Tears came to his eyes unbidden as he stared at what Chewbacca had done. That _wookie_.

_She_ had been there. Had she delighted in seeing him shot? Had she even cared?

The bleeding scar on his face was an answer to that question.

He pressed his finger into his wound again, harder that time, to rid himself of his thoughts. It stung even more when he wiped the blood away with a wet towel. A hiss escaped him as he cleaned himself off, brushing away at all of his injuries. It hurt even more when he took a shower.

Nothing would be covered up; the Supreme Leader would see it as weakness if he tried to patch up his lessons before he had learned them. And he would be right.

Pain was important. An important lesson.

When he finished and had donned a fresh set of clothes, he went back to retrieve the mask. Pressing the code into a keypad, a locked compartment in his wall opened up, a small safe where he kept precious, important things. Where he kept his grandfather’s helmet and nothing else.

He didn’t want to keep the mask with his grandfather’s helmet. In fact – the thought revolted him.

The Supreme Leader had told him to keep it safe. He would follow his master’s orders, of course-

His revulsion was just another sign of his weakness. The darkness of the mask wasn't _rotten_. Not truly. He was just _weak_.

After a long moment’s consideration, he closed the compartment. Placed the mask where it had been on the desk. No one was allowed in his room, anyway. It would be safe enough.

Kylo fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit his pillow.

In his dreams, he caught the scavenger. Like an animal ensnared in a hunter’s trap, he found her so easily in the make-believe world of his mind. And after he caught her, he killed her. Over and over, the way their confrontation _should_ have gone. The Dream narrowed down to just the two of them, to him and her and the pulse in his hands that grew stronger as hers weakened. The flutter felt so _real_ under his fingertips, so personal. _Intimate_. He never noticed the wetness on his cheeks. And he never noticed the second figure in his dreams, the one that stood just out of sight as he strangled her.

The figure who had been standing in the shadows of his room even before he fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, I'm _so_ sorry I didn't reply to any of the reviews on my last chapter. You guys are all so amazing and deserve replies. I have no excuse, except that I'm awful. Also, this chapter was almost a millennia in coming, so I'm sorry about that as well.
> 
> Writing Kylo is so fun, I always love getting into his POV. Plus, he kind of had a few things going on in this chapter. Thank you for reading, and for sticking with me!


	5. Chapter 5

It repeated. Over and over, like it was on some terrible loop.

The dream.

The nightmare.

Or, was it-

No. It _had_ to be a dream, there was no way it could be real. Rey _knew_ it wasn’t real. Yet – it was so easy to forget. It only took a moment, a flutter of her eyelids, and she was sucked back into the illusion. Every time, for countless times.

Her heart twisted. She opened her eyes and saw-

Ash.

The entire world was covered in ash, as far as she could see in any direction. What remained of the world. Dead beneath her boots.

A shiver shot through Rey’s bones, sharp and violent. Nothing remained-

No life.

No Force.

It was difficult to tell what world it had been, what life had once lived where things only echoed now. The ground jutted out like it had been broken apart by an earthquake, like large parts of the planet had simply broken loose and fallen into the void. The wind carried dust and shards of rocks, and the stars blinked as they passed in front of them.

Those distant stars that cried for the death at her feet.

How _beautiful_ life had been-

Rey felt the air stir around her, tugging at the loose strands of hair at her temples and brushing past her fingers, the stale exhale from some great, dying beast. An echo of something that had once been alive.

The ash kicked up around her boots, like the gravity wasn’t quite right. She felt both as if she was being pulled down towards the center of the planet and as if it was trying to expel her into the darkness of space .

Even more black cliffs jutted out of the ground in the distance, letting out the yawning darkness at the center of the planet. All around her, the ash slowly started to cover the skeletons of ships and buildings. It almost reminded her of the ship graveyard on Jakku, only it wasn’t-

It wasn’t like that.

A small awareness started to come back to her. It was some sort of cold, twisted nightmare. It had to be. Everything couldn’t just be dead.

Even the _Force_ -

The darkness bled up into the sky like a ship leaking oil.

Into the stars.

They cried out in silent terror.

As she turned her face up to the void above her, another shiver shot down her spine, freezing her heart with icy realization.

Up there. A blank spot in the stars, half hidden behind the floating dust.

_Death_ , her heart whispered.

Looking down on her.

_Death, death, death_ -

The void opened up its great teeth and the stars watched her get eaten alive. Her screams tore through the fabric of the darkness. Death swallowed her-

 

* * *

 

 

But Death wasn’t there when she opened her eyes. Lifeless gray, blinding white cut into her vision instead. For a moment, she wondered if the world simply lost all its color when one died.

But then she remembered that shade of gray, where she had seen it before. She bolted upright, then winced when she felt how stiff her body was. But that only stole her attention for a second.

A cell-

_Captured_.

She had been _caught-_

The First Order, they must have caught her.

Everything came back to her at once – the plans, the crash. She still had no idea what had happened to Poe, if he had even survived. Her state of injury made sense again. Wounded in the crash, and then again in the fight-

Kylo Ren. He had chased her up the mountain, which had collapsed under their feet.

She must have hit her head. Or he used his powers to incapacitate her – it didn’t matter. Rey swallowed, tried to make her heart beat normally. She was a prisoner of the First Order again. Again.

Because of him.

_Again_.

It was only a small mercy that she hadn’t woken up in another interrogation chair, strapped down with a monster watching her from the shadows. The durasteel slab extending from the wall was unforgiving and cold and the cell was so small that it nearly took up half the space, but this was by far more preferable. And they had left her wounds. She was accustomed to waking up with half-healed cuts and bruises, but she was surprised at how healed her injuries were. She must have been unconscious for longer than she realized - been _left_ unconscious.

She wondered if that meant that they weren’t interested in getting information from her. That they didn’t care if she knew anything this time, or if – no. She and Poe had stolen sensitive intel, intel that they would want back. If they didn’t _care_ , if she wasn’t strapped down for interrogation, did that mean that they had already recovered the information? Did that mean that Poe had been captured, too – or worse?

A knot clenched in her chest. The dream had left her shaken, the fear for her friend made her sick.

The knowledge that Kylo Ren had managed to capture her again made her fist her hands into her pants and grind her teeth. If she saw him again-

When. He would surely come to torture her, or to finish the job as he had promised. A part of her wondered why he had not killed her yet.

She would make that father-killer regret it.

Rey waited, either for a trooper or for Kylo Ren himself to walk through her cell door, to interrogate her or torture her or execute her. Feet planted firmly on the ground, fingers gripping the edge of the durasteel bed so tightly she started to lose feeling in them, she waited for – something.

Someone.

No one came.

All she heard was the low thrum of the ship’s engines, little more than a buzzing in the back of her head. She tried to stretch out her senses, to try and find someone – _him_ – but she wasn’t focused enough. She could barely remember any of the instruction Luke had given her, little as it had been.

If only she had stayed longer. If only he had let her.

Her solitude stretched on a millennia. Yet she never relaxed her grip, never let the tension from her muscles. She felt as if she was standing on top of a sleeping sarlac’s mouth, waiting for it to wake up and realize that breakfast had practically stumbled into its stomach. So she kept herself still, barely breathing as she tried to come up with a plan.

And she tried not to think of her dream.

 

* * *

 

 

Meals were delivered through a small slot at the base of the cell door. It was too small to catch even a glimpse of a person, which was intentional. An old kind of torture, to be left so alone, and yet she felt the lack of interaction with a different sharpness than she had felt growing up by herself in the desert. She had gotten used to people, to seeing them and to talking. To having friends. _People_.

The First Order wasn’t going to give her another chance to use a trick of the Force like she had the first time. She wondered if the slow agony being kept in solitary confinement caused her was intentional on their part, or just a happy accident.

Of course, Kylo Ren had seen inside of her head. So it had to be intentional.

But she would not let herself unravel so easily.

Seven meals passed before Rey saw anybody. Before anyone actually stepped into the cell.

She knew it would be him.

Kylo Ren filled the small space with his frame as he stepped into the cell, dark as a shadow and as foul as poison. Her breath hitched. He wasn’t wearing his mask, but he almost didn’t need to. The fierceness of his frown cast shadows over his eyes, over the edges of his face. A torrent of animosity rushed from him, but it seemed – unfocused. Everywhere.

She could barely breathe as he took up her space, her air.

Rey stood, forced her legs to hold her up and willed herself to be strong despite how sore she still was. Despite the suffocating darkness of him. It was the first time she had seen his face since that night. _That_ night. Starkiller.

He had nearly taken everything from her.

And he was still trying.

“You’ve been unconscious for a long time.” It was impossible to tell if that was disappointing to him or not. Maybe he was mocked her.

Her lip curled into a sneer. It unnerved her, the implication that he was waiting for her to wake up. Again. It reminded her of that room, of waking up in a hostile environment to find that monster kneeling in front of her. Waiting. “So now that I’m awake you’ve come to torture me?”

It was the first time she’d used her voice in a while, and the words came out cracked, weaker than she wanted. She balled her fist at her side.

Kylo’s nostrils flared as he leaned in closer, obviously used to being able to intimidate people with his size. His scar a thin, scabbed-over crack in his skin, little more than a streak of half-healed red against his gray pallor.

It the end, _that_ was all that she had done to him. The only reminder of how she had left him, bleeding into the snow. Far from the justice she wanted.

Far from the justice he _deserved_.

Her face gave her thoughts away.

“You’re not happy to see me?” His expression darkened, if that was even possible. The words were a shell of banter, perhaps just a reflex. They did little to disguise his true feelings, his urge for violence. She was glad that he wasn’t trying to play at being interested in her anymore, wasn’t pretending that he found her special.

Or, maybe he was just too angry.

She couldn’t help but lean back, just a little.

“Get away from me.”

A muscle twitched in his jaw. She swallowed.

“Anything the scavenger says.”

But he didn’t lean back, he didn’t move an inch. Rey lifted her chin just a tad, determined not to give in to his intimidation, to the feeling of claustrophobia pressing in on her. She had spent many times in dark, cramped spaces with no room to breathe. This was nothing she hadn’t survived before.

Except – Kylo Ren hadn’t been there, in those cramped spaces. So, this wasn’t really like that at all.

There was no mental onslaught, this time, but she still felt the press of his mind. His thoughts were guarded, but _feeling_ bled through uninhibited. His dark and twisted presence was suffocating on its own; a storm of loathing and bitterness.

How could he stand it?

Her stomach rolled in disgust.

“I should have killed you,” he said, but she wasn’t sure if he was speaking to her or himself. “I should have left you in that temple.”

She longed to goad him, to insinuate that he would have only stood a chance of killing her while she was unconscious. To call him the coward he was, right to his face. Yet, something in his eyes gave her pause. Raised the hair on the back of her neck. That old intuition she’d always had, that sense of _danger_ that had kept her alive all her years, kept the words from forming on her mouth, from spitting them at his face.

“Missed your chance, I guess.”

He blinked, as if he had not expected her to respond, then snarled, “You’re lucky you’ve caught the eye of the Supreme Leader. Otherwise, I would have killed you as soon as I found you.”

Hearing that the leader of the First Order was interested in her made her stomach drop. She had to tight against the urge to fold into herself, had to stop herself from letting a violent shiver run down her back or from breaking out in a cold sweat. Her palms grew sweaty.

“It’s too late,” she tried, even though she didn’t know if what she was saying was true, “the information has been sent to the Resistance by now, so your leader-”

“The Supreme Leader isn’t interested in what you _stole_ ,” Kylo Ren cut her off. “He is interested in the girl who destroyed Starkiller base.” The leather of his gloves squeaked as his clenched his fists. Her gaze flickered down to them, then quickly back to his dark eyes. She pressed her lips together.

She didn’t destroy Starkiller base. But that wasn’t what he meant.

_The girl who overcame Kylo Ren, who left him for dead._

_The girl who cleaved his face in two-_

“You mean because I beat you.”

The words were out of her mouth before she had time to truly register them. They soured the air, and Rey almost wished that she hadn’t said anything. She knew what he really meant and he knew that she knew.

Despite that, she was glad to show him that she didn’t fear him.

Would he do something to try and ease his wounded pride? Monsters such as him always struck out-

His nostrils flared. A muscle in his jaw twitched.

“The Supreme Leader likes trophies,” he said. When his eyes flickered downward, briefly giving her a once-over, she wanted to punch him. He didn’t look impressed. “We’ll see what he says when he sees you, though.”

“You’re hoping he’ll kill me.”

He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to.

She held his gaze, tilted her chin higher. “Or maybe he wants to replace _you_.”

Fire sparked in his eyes.

Power charged the air-

Rey slammed against the cell wall, blown back by a blast of the Force. She gasped as her still-bruised back connected with unforgiving durasteel. She slumped to the floor with a small _thud_. Kylo’s power raged within the confines of the room, much too big for the tiny space. His features twisted into a hideous snarl.

“I’d kill you first, _scavenger_.” He spit. She noticed almost belatedly that he clutched his lightsaber hilt in his hand, mere moments away from activating it and finishing her off once and for all. Rey’s heart pounded like a drum in her ears, adrenaline spiking as she thought _this was is, she was going to die_ -

But he didn’t make another move against her. He inhaled then exhaled, screwing his eyes shut in an unexpected moment of control. It felt almost surreal to Rey, seeing him trying to steady himself.

She didn’t think he was very successful at it.

He kept his eyes shut for several long moments, time enough for her to push herself up off the floor. She considered attack him, trying to fight her way to freedom, but he still clutched his lightsaber in his hand, and the Force seemed more like a torrent than a stabilizing power with him so near.

Kylo’s eyes opened, and for a moment he looked a little dazed. As if he had forgotten where he was. When he looked down at her the shadows on his face darkened.

“You’re not worth my time.”

“Then why did you waste it coming to see me?” She demanded. If he wasn’t there to _torture_ her-

It was as if the thought had never occurred to him. He flinched back like she had hit him, and his scowl deepened. Without a word, he spun around and stormed out of the cell.

The door slid shut behind him. Locked with a _click_.

Rey stared at the door until she could no longer sense him nearby. He faded into the haze of life she felt around her, her senses not refined enough to pinpoint specific individuals. Not in a place like this, where dark thoughts and poor intentions permeated the Force around her.

She didn’t realize she had been holding her breath until she released it.

 

* * *

 

 

There was a shift in the thrum of the ship, a subtle difference that Rey didn’t notice until it had stopped. She felt it in the soles of her boots more than anything. Something miniscule.

The ship had exited hyperspace.

What that meant for her, for what was about to happen to her – well, it could only be bad. Kylo Ren had told her that she was being taken to their leader-

She didn’t sense a change in the air, but that didn’t mean much. She could not rely much on her senses on this ship, or anywhere in the First Order. Darkness covered all of it, too much to be able to effectively sift through with the limited amount of training she had managed to complete.

The slot at the bottom of her cell opened and the usual ration of nutrient paste slid through.

“Wait,” she jumped up, keeping the slot open with her power. It felt good to flex her power in the Force. Felt like she was _doing_ something for the first time in ages. She felt the trooper struggle against her on the other side, trying to force the slot shut. “Where are we?”

She got no response.

“Where are we?” She demanded again.

“No talking.” The voice was distant, clipped and altered through a helmet.

Suddenly, the trooper stopped fighting to close the slot, which confused her a moment. Then the entire cell electrified, and everything became pain.

She screamed as energy coursed through her.

It only lasted a couple of seconds, but it felt much longer. She had never been _electrified_ , not like that. The shocks she had gotten while scavenging old tech on Jakku were less than nothing compared to this. Rey crumpled to a heap on the ground as soon as it stopped, gasping as residual energy caused her limbs to spasm. Her flesh felt burned, cooked.

“ _No talking_.”

This time, the trooper’s voice came through the cell’s intercom. The slot in the door slid shut.

Rey squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to unclench her body, muscle by muscle. A whimper escaped her, despite herself. That had been her warning. A _warning_. That probably didn’t even count as torture for them.

She had never been tortured before. Not besides her mental battle with Kylo Ren. Not really. The thought occurred to her like she had only just noticed some yawning hole to the abyss at her feet. It broke something in her chest, something that oozed into her lungs and swirled in her gut.

Kylo Ren’s Supreme Leader was most likely going to torture her. Luke had told her the stories, how the Emperor had tortured him in order to try and get him to turn-

That swirling, drowning feeling gripped her. _Fear_. Fear for Poe, for Finn, for the Resistance. For herself. It seemed pain was in all of their futures, in one way or another.

Hers was getting closer by the moment.

Another flash of pain shot across her chest.

 

* * *

 

 

The ship remained out of hyperspace for a shorter time than she expected. It fact, she had not excepted to feel the ship enter hyperspace again. She had expected to be removed from her cell, for Kylo Ren at the head of a dozen troops to escort her to their Supreme Leader, but that never happened. No one told her anything – of course they wouldn’t – but she wasn’t disturbed again until it was time for her best meal.

She had not touched the last three meals shoved through that slot. She didn’t see why it mattered much, if she was heading to meet their leader. Death most likely awaited her anyway.

All at once, the thrum under her feet rumbled to life, and something in her shifted once more. Back into hyperspace.

Confusion pulled her brows low on her forehead.

Had they not arrived at their destination? She had thought-

It didn’t matter really, they would get there sooner rather than later either way. But still, she couldn’t help the relief that permeated her lungs, spreading across her ribs. She released a shaky breath and leaned her head back against the wall. Her body still felt sore, wounded. 

A little while longer.

She had just a little while longer.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A look at what Rey's up to. I actually wrote this chapter at the same time I wrote the last one, but I only just got finished editing it. Rey's not in a great spot right now, but I'm starting these two off in pretty bad places in general. We'll see where it goes from here. But, hey, at least we got our first conversation between the two.
> 
> Thank you so much for your response to the last chapter. I'll admit, I was afraid that most (or all) of you guys had dropped this story - not that I'd blame you. I'm so glad that some of you are enjoying this story! I'll try to get my next chapter out fairly soon.


	6. Chapter 6

The _Supremacy_ filled the bridge’s viewports, looming over the Star Destroyer even from a distance. Kylo always felt a tense mixture of relief and anxiety when he saw the Supreme Leader’s Mega-Class Destroyer. The Familiarity of his master’s presence and the bone-deep dread of whatever lesson was sure to come. The Supreme Leader always had a lesson to teach him, always a painful one. He was never called return to his presence unless he did.

As he stared out at the First Order’s capital ship, it was the dread that gripped his heart.

How very much he had failed his master since he had last been summoned. The punishment he was about to receive would be – crippling. He prayed to the Force for the strength to withstand it, to learn from it. He had begged his grandfather for strength, too, but couldn’t stand to stare at his mask for long, knowing that he had failed him, as well. Failed by being weak.

He breathed in through his nose, tried to steady his presence in the Force. The Supreme Leader sensed everything; Kylo couldn't let himself spiral into fear. Not yet.

He had the scavenger. He had the mask. Surely, that would be some sort of consolation. Some sort of proof that he was still useful.

If the Supreme Leader decided to throw him away, if he decided that he had finaly had _enough_ of his apprentice, Kylo wouldn’t survive the event. His master didn’t leave discarded things alive. And where would he go even if he was spared? There was nowhere else for him, nowhere except at his master’s side. He would be dead either way.

Surely, the mask would be enough. And the girl.

_Maybe he wants to replace you._

Her words had followed him, stuck to his boots like his own shadow, long after he had left the scavenger’s cell. They still haunted him, pecked away at his resolve like poking holes in a sinking boat. Each little hole let in more dread. Fear.

“I imagine you’re not eager to present yourself before the Supreme Leader.” Kylo almost startled at Hux’s snide voice beside him. He had been so absorbed in his thoughts, in the ever-growing presence of his master overtaking his senses, he had not noticed the general's approach.

His muscles tensed, and he couldn’t help the twitch in his jaw. He ground his teeth together. It was difficult keeping his expression more or less neutral, impossible to retreat into the blankness of his missing mask. He really missed that damned thing.

“Be grateful I saved you from the disaster you made for yourself,” Kylo returned testily.

Hux turned to face him fully. Kylo couldn’t help but look over as well, if only to prove that he did not fear meeting his eyes. The general’s mouth twisted into a half-sneer.

“If you had done your job and followed orders instead of traipsing after some _girl_ , then you wouldn’t have incurred the Supreme Leader’s wrath. The blame rests squarely on your shoulders.”

The general reveled in it, in the thought of Kylo being punished by the Supreme Leader. Kylo wanted nothing more than to blast Hux’s sneering face out the viewport, or to smash him into a console.

He couldn’t do that. His punishment would double if he did.

But he wanted to.

“At least I have something to show for my efforts. What have you been doing, besides losing ground and resources?” Kylo let his posture become a little more threatening, although they both knew Kylo couldn’t touch him.

Hux’s brow quirked and real displeasure bled into his tone. “What I _will_ be doing is making sure the intel _you_ let fall into the enemy’s hands isn’t used to their advantage.”

Neither spoke for several seconds, the silence strained almost to bursting. Kylo worked his jaw, unwilling to let it go but unable to think of anything to say that would put Hux in his place. His recent actions damned him, and Hux knew as well as he that the Supreme Leader had summoned Kylo to punish him for those actions.

“General Hux, Sir, you have been cleared to board.” An officer reported. What she really meant was that they had both been cleared, but no one ever addressed Kylo unless they had to. The interruption did little to lessen the tension on the bridge.

When Kylo didn’t say anything for another beat, Hux took it to mean that he had won. “Well, Ren.” He folded his hands behind his back. “Let’s not keep the Supreme Leader waiting.”

Kylo clenched his gloves, again wishing more than anything that he could blast him through the viewport.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Rey jolted awake at the sound of her cell door opening. For a brief, fluttering moment her heart leapt in her throat as she thought that Kylo Ren had returned, that he had caught her sleeping and off-guard, the worst disadvantage. The last time she had been caught so unaware, she had been robbed of ten whole portion's worth of salvage and beaten until she had nearly blacked out. Blindly and out of habit, Rey started to reach for her staff before she remembered where she was. She relaxed only infinitesimally when she saw that it was only a pair of troopers that entered her cell.

“Get up,” one of them ordered. Reluctantly, she did as she was told. They did, after all, have their blasters pointed at her face while she was completely unarmed.

Mostly unarmed.

Now was her chance to escape if she was ever going to, she thought, until she stepped out of the cell to find six more troopers with their weapons pointed at her. Apparently, Kylo Ren was not going to take any chances. But, why wasn't he there himself? She would have thought that he would not want to let her out of his sight if she was being transported. It was difficult to sense where he was.

Without preamble, a pair of cuffs were thrown onto her wrists. They did something strange to her as soon as the lock clicked in place, something that muffled her senses all at once. Kylo Ren, and every other person onboard the ship, were suddenly hidden from her. It was like having a bag thrown over her head, only in the Force.

A pit formed in her stomach. Her breathing became stilted. “What is this?” She choked out, half to herself.

The stormtroopers ignored her. One of them shoved her down the corridor, jamming the barrel of his weapon into her shoulder as he barked, “Move, prisoner.”

The pit in her stomach turned into bitter resignation. So this was it. She was going to be taken before the leader of the First Order. Kylo Ren’s master. Again, she was surprised that he hadn’t come down himself to escort her. He wanted to present her like a trophy, didn’t he?

The stormtroopers escorted her through a maze of stark corridors, taking so many turns it amazed Rey that anyone ever found their way around at all. She was taken to the hangar, where a shuttle sat primed and ready for takeoff. Apart from the dozens of personnel milling about, two figures stood at the bottom of the shuttle's ramp, obviously waiting. One, she recognized almost instinctively. The other, a redheaded officer, she didn’t know.

Kylo Ren stood rigid with tension, although he exhaled visibly when she came into view. Rey thought that perhaps he had been expecting her to try and escape before she got there. There a look on his face that made the fear roll in her gut despite herself. He held her gaze as she approached, still without his helmet. Distantly, she wondered if he thought he no longer needed it now that she had given him a scar.

Even with the muffling effect from the cuffs, she could sense his turmoil. His _dread_.

She couldn’t help the surprise that flashed across her face. He broke eye contact.

The redheaded officer looked her over with a bored sort of curiosity. He had the same air of superiority that she had seen on every First Order officer she had come across so far. Worse, even. His eyes were frigid.

“So this is the rat who nearly killed Ren.” He spoke as if the idea was vaguely amusing. Rey scowled up at him, despising him at once. She could practically hear the unspoken, ‘ _if only you had_.’

By the look on Kylo’s face, he understood the implication, too. But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t do anything. Rey thought that this man must have been on the same level as Kylo Ren, if he showed restraint like that. Although, he looked as if that restraint was barely holding him back.

She didn’t deign to reply, besides to lift her chin.

That was, apparently, the end of the officer’s interest. He swept passed Kylo Ren to board the shuttle.

“Put her onboard,” Kylo ordered. His hand rested on the hilt of his lightsaber when he made eye contact with her again. “Don’t even think of trying anything, scavenger. I’m watching you.”

She didn’t say anything to him, either. Not that she had a chance, before two of the troopers escorted her up the ramp.

The shuttle departed almost as soon as the ramp sealed shut. Rey was taken to the back of the shuttle and strapped into a chair that was obviously meant for prisoners. How many prisoners had sat in this chair before her, awaiting torture and death? She remembered Poe’s tale of being captured by the First Order; maybe he had been strapped into a chair just like this one.

Rey prayed to the Force that Poe had managed to get away, that the Resistance had gotten the intel. Otherwise, this was all useless. Her death would be – _pointless_.

Assuming that this Supreme Leader would kill her in the end. Maybe what he wanted was even worse. _Trophies_ , Kylo had said.

Her gaze flickered over to Kylo, who sat just within view towards the front of the shuttle. He sat hunched like he was just waiting to spring into action, his dark robes draped around him like a shroud. His anxiety seemed to fill the shuttle, thick and acrid and strong enough that she felt it even with the cuffs. She resented him for projecting so much emotion. It made the growing terror inside of her just that much worse.

It was difficult to steady her breathing. The best she could hope for was a swift execution. The _worst_ -

Kylo’s head snapped around as if he had heard her thoughts. She couldn’t read his, not with the cuffs binding her. She didn’t want to, anyway. She had no desire to take a second look at his dark thoughts, where fear and anger and resentment colored everything.

He rose from his seat and moved to stand in front of her. Rey had to crane her neck back to look him in the eye. She thought that he stood so close on purpose, just to try and make her uncomfortable. For a moment, he simply glowered down at her, and her up at him. Then he crouched in front of her, bringing himself to her eye level. She couldn’t help but flinch at his sudden movement, and at how - intimate - the space betwen them was.

When he spoke, his tone was almost hushed. Like he didn’t want anyone else to hear.

“Are you prepared to die, scavenger?” He asked.

“Go space yourself,” she snapped automatically. His brows twitched in irritation, but his expression turned unreadable. She watched as his shoulders rose and fell as he took a deep breath.

“I thought you were more of a fighter.”

She saw his clenched fists where he rested his forearms on his thighs. His own dread washed over her like a wave from so close. Rey studied him for a long moment. She was a little shocked that he didn't say anything, that he let her look. “What are you so afraid of?”

Instantly, that unreadable look on his face turned to a snarl. With a low growl, he sprang back to his feet. She jolted again, tensed for a strike, but refused to cower. She kept her gaze fixed on him.

“I can feel it.” I felt good to rub something in his face. She raised her hands. “Even with these-”

He slammed his hand down over the cuffs, pinning them to her lap with enough force to make her wince. The troopers flanking her shifted, like they were suddenly unsure of their safety while being so close to Kylo Ren. Rey refused to give him that satisfaction.

“You’re the one who should be afraid,” he snapped, his face so close to hers that she could feel his breath hot on her face. He looked as if he had not gotten much sleep, his eyes were red and irritated.

She tried to jerk her hands out from under him, but he just pressed down harder. “I’m right, though, aren’t I?”

Up at the front of the shuttle, the pilot reported that they were cleared to land in one of the hangars. The announcement drew Kylo’s attention for a brief moment, his fingers tightening around her cuffs. The leather of his gloves brushed the back of her hand. Rey allowed herself to glance out the viewport, seeing the only thing she had seen since they had left the hangar: one ship, massive enough that she couldn’t even make out the shape of it. It filled the viewport, just a slate of durasteel plating and the light from the occasional viewport or passing TIE fighter.

Of course the First Order’s leader would be on such a massive ship. It just made escape all the less likely.

A pinch on her hand drew her attention back to Kylo Ren. He gripped her cuffs so tightly that his hand nearly shook. His already gray pallor looked sheet white, except for the circles under his eyes. He inhaled through his nose.

Rey furrowed her brows.

“It’s him, isn’t it?” She whispered, using the same tone he had moments ago. She didn’t know why.

Before, she had goaded him with the idea that his Supreme Leader might want to replace him. But surely-

Kylo’s gaze snapped back to her, and it was as if he finally realized how close he had leaned down. Releasing her cuffs as if they had burned him, he turned and stormed back to his seat. He looked even more wound up than before, his muscles coiled and his throat bobbing as he swallowed. Besides that, he didn’t move an inch. The redheaded officer seated across from him didn’t look up from his datapad once, as if he was totally blind to the dangerous man next to him.

Then again, she supposed that Kylo Ren’s violence might not seem as threatening in comparison to the being she was being taken to see. This being who had Kylo just as terrified as she was.

As they entered the hangar, flew into the belly of the beast, a new sense crept around the corners of Rey’s mind. It felt twisted and dark, resentful and corrupted. Like cold ink spilling into water. It had to be their Supreme Leader. She had never come across anything so - intimidating.

And she could feel the presence respond to her. _Acknowledge_ her. Kylo Ren straightened in his seat.

The knot in her stomach tightened. She suddenly found it very difficult to breathe.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Kylo went through everything in a haze. He made sure to retrieve the locked container he had stored the Sith artifact in from the seat next to him, tucking it under his arm. He made sure to watch that the scavenger was escorted off the shuttle without a fight. Then he pulled out his lightsaber hilt and held it at his side, just in case. Without a word, he began directing her to one of the lifts. Towards his master. Hux would be summoned immediately afterwards, but he had time to check in with a few of his officers. It was easier than usual to ignore the knowing sneer he threw their way when Kylo led the girl past him when his heart was thudding so loudly.

It would take no time at all to arrive at Supreme Leader Snoke’s throne room. A cold sweat broke out on his neck.

The closer Kylo led the scavenger to the heart of the vessel, the less people they saw. Soon, it was just him and her, practically alone except for the ever-increasing sense of his master's presence. Kylo didn’t forget that the scavenger was there, but he did forget some of his animosity towards her as they walked. In his dread-stricken state, he found himself clinging to the fact that the same cloying fear rolled off of her shoulders as well. He had, in fact, clung to it since their brief ride in the shuttle.

The scavenger stopped when he told her to, waiting with her lips drawn into a thin line as he summoned the final turbolift to take them to the throne room. He could sense her heart thudding in her chest, could see her quick, shallow breathing. She kept her eyes fixed on the door to the turbolift.

Kylo stared at her openly. She didn’t notice.

The turbolift door slid open. It was small and round, and they both stood as far away from each other as possible. The door hissed shut and it started to move. After several moments, she said, “Looks like you’ll get what you want.”

He glanced at her, remembering a little of his animosity.

“You should have taken my offer.”

“I would have never joined you-”

“Then you brought this on yourself,” he snapped.

She muttered something under her breath, but he didn’t catch it.

The turbolift stopped just as suddenly as it started. The door hissed open.

Kylo had not spent very much time in this room. Not physically. The oppressive red always seemed to press down on his vision, on his senses, despite the large size of the room. The very air was filled to the brim with his master’s presence, with power and authority and something dark that he had never exactly been able to place. The power had turned fowl, evidence of the Supreme Leader’s displeasure. But there was something else in the air, as well, when his master’s gaze fell on the scavenger, and then fixed on the container nestled under Kylo’s arm.

Supreme Leader Snoke leaned forward in his throne, his robes slowly shifting around him. absently, Kylo sensed the shiver that ran down the scavenger’s back beside him. He heard her inhale sharply as he reached out and gripped her bicep, just in case she tried anything stupid.

“Kylo Ren,” the Supreme Leader’s voice echoed throughout the chamber. His expression was difficult to read, but he heard the utter displeasure well enough. Felt it directed at him, same as the last time they had spoken. Kylo felt himself go very still.

His master didn't punish him immediately. Instead, the Supreme Leader held out his hand, his expression pointed and focused.

“Bring that to me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I had a whole other chapter written, but I scrapped it. I sat down the other day and wrote this all in one sitting, which is amazing to me because it's been a very long time since I've done something like that.
> 
> Well, we have Snoke physically entering the scene now. I stopped it there because this ended up being about my usual chapter length, but also things are going to go downhill from here and I want to save that for next time. Thank you so much for reading, let me know your thoughts!
> 
> (Also, this will be the last thing I post before I see TLJ. I _cannot_ express how pumped I am.)


End file.
